Counterhegemony

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A counterhegemony refers to an alternate normative interpretation of the functioning of social, economic, and political institutions.

If a counterhegemony grows large enough it is able to subsume and replace the historic bloc it was born in. Neo-Gramscians use the Machiavellian terms war of position and war of movement to explain how this is possible. In a war of position a counterhegemonic movement attempts, through persuasion or propaganda, to increase the number of people who share its view on the hegemonic order; in a war of movement the counterhegemonic tendencies which have grown large enough overthrow, violently or democratically, the current hegemony and establish themselves as a new historic bloc.

According to Theodore H. Cohn, "a counterhegemony is an alternative ethical view of society that poses a challenge to the dominant bourgeois-led view"^[1].